Nathan Adams – UWC Institutional Development
Can the Expropriation Act be used as a tool for land justice? The Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) and Tshisimani Centre for Activist Education (TCAE) at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) hosted a public dialogue on land justice and the newly signed Expropriation Act.
The Minister of Land Reform and Rural Development, Mzwanele Nyhontso, delivered a keynote address and heard responses from activists, communities and students during a panel discussion and open dialogue session.
Samora Majeke from Intlungu YaseMatyotyombeni, Bevil Lucas from Reclaim the City, Nazeer Sonday from the Food and Farming Campaign, Women on Farms’ Bettie Fortuin, and UWC SRC President Mcntosh Khasembe provided three-minute deliveries to the minister.
Watch the full programme below.
UWC Rector and Vice-Chancellor, Professor Robert Balfour, welcomed guests and the Minister and encouraged them to continue using the University platforms for critical debates such as land expropriation, justice and reconciliation.
In his keynote address, the Minister emphasised the importance of expropriation as a historical and contemporary tool for achieving land justice in South Africa. He highlighted the deep connections to identity, dignity, and economic security amidst ongoing inequalities shaped by race and class.
He said: “There is no day designated for the restoration of land. Despite our painful history.There is no day designated to remember how the land was stolen. There is no day to highlight homelessness in South Africa. Designating such a day will foreground and put on the centre stage the struggle for land. On such a day, you can measure progress – not just on how much land is destroyed, but also how much progress we have made on the restoration of our democracy as a dispossessed people.
Also, the Minister did not avoid the current diplomatic exchanges between South Africa and the United States of America, and addressed US President Donald Trump’s remarks that white farmers are welcome in the USA as their land is being forcefully confiscated as per the current Act.
He said: “The President of the United States, Donald Trump, issued an invitation to South African farmers, to Afrikaners, to come to the United States because the South African government is confiscating their land. The Expropriation Act is not for land confiscation. But they can accept the challenge and go to the USA.”
Several comments from the floor spoke directly to the government’s involvement in evictions, with one university law student asking the Minister if the Expropriation Act would be used to protect people looking for housing, instead of the government “remaining enemy number one”.
The Minister reiterated that government’s job is to serve its people.
He said: “When we say Land First, we are not talking about land grabbing, because land grabbing amounts to theft, and theft is the modus operandi of settler colonialists. Settler colonialists can never be our teachers. We do not have to steal what is already ours”
In its invitation to the seminar, PLAAS noted that while negative reactions to the Expropriation Act have dominated the public narrative, the voices of those who stand to benefit and who want land to be expropriated have not been heard.
Prof Ruth Hall, the Acting Director at PLAAS, said that over the past three decades, the SA government has not prioritised land redistribution. “In these years, instead of using its constitutional powers, the state has been buying land, and it has redistributed only 11% of the commercial farmland in all these years. We are in a world reeling from disinformation and fake news – where we are told – without any evidence, that white land is being confiscated, that there is a white genocide underway in South Africa. In this way, the raw politics of land has been obscured, and the public narrative has focused on the fears and interests of landowners. Missing in all of this has been the voices of the landless who want the land to be expropriated.”
Siviwe Mdoda of TCAE, who facilitated the open dialogue, said that although the event was fruitful in the sense that most of the represented constituencies were given an opportunity to address the minister, and that others would be able to submit questions to his office, that these kinds of engagements should not be once off, but rather the beginning of a dialogue between the Department of Land Reform and Rural Development and affected communities in order to move towards more meaningful engagement around land justice for the poor and working class.
Minister Nyhontso spoke of the need for redress and that even when land is put on the open market for sale, the state needs to be alerted, and considerations of re-purchase should be undertaken. The Minister singled out one farm owner when addressing the audience. “There is one farmer in Bloemfontein in the Free State whose farm is bigger in size than Lesotho. Over 7.2 million hectares of land were redistributed by the state over the past 30 years. One of the weaknesses of this distribution was that it came without any state support. This Bill wanted to ensure the success of the redistribution of the land by including a package of land development support.”
He concluded, saying that there needs to be a balance between the capitalist approach to land as a commodity and using land as a tool for equitable redress and justice.
